Editing a Network Material

You can edit the attributes created by the network material and shading network in two ways - either using the interface previously created or, more directly, edit the attributes of the original shading nodes.

Edit a network material using its interface, you need to edit the scene graph location, in the same way as a normal material, using the Material node. To do this, follow the steps in Editing a Material It's necessary to use a Material node, even for a network material, and the node must be able to accept edits. In addition, the makeInteractive option on the Material node needs to be set to yes in order for the edits to be made interactively in the Viewer.

The shading node’s parameters are stored as attributes on the network material. The interface is used to expose some of these parameters and attributes for easy editing. Sometimes you may need to edit the attributes not exposed. Editing the attributes that aren’t exposed is done with the NetworkMaterialParameterEdit node.

To perform an edit with the NetworkMaterialParameterEdit node:

1.

Create a NetworkMaterialParameterEdit node and connect it to the recipe at the point you want to make an edit.

2.

Select the NetworkMaterialParameterEdit node and press Alt+E.

The NetworkMaterialParameterEdit node becomes editable within the Parameters tab.

3.

Add the network material’s scene graph location you want to edit to the location parameter. For more on editing a scene graph location parameter, see Manipulating a Scene Graph Location Parameter.

4.

Select any shading nodes to edit by either:

• selecting Add > <shading node name>, or

• clicking  , and then right-clicking on any shading nodes to edit and selecting Expose Parameters.

5.

Make any changes to the shading nodes inside the nodes parameter grouping.